Author: pj

Started pencilling this one, and I kind of liked the texture, and I wanted an old penny dreadful feel to it anyway, and lo, we ended up with a pencilled page… 

https://open.spotify.com/track/4cvlph4w9RGpSH8tf1c885?si=AoIFA2-aRQiggGxtTYVJmw

Here’s the pencils for this one

It’s a beetles concert.

Look, I’m tired and I apologise for spelling out the joke. But there it is.

February 1838. 18-year-old Jane Alsop is startled by hammering at her door. A man outside shouts that he’s a police officer and requires a lamp. Jane’s light reveals the caller for what he really is: Spring-Heeled Jack. The Terror of Old London Town. 

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The entity we now call Spring Heeled Jack first made its self known late in the summer of 1837 when a curious shape changing creature – reported variously as an imp, a white bull, a ghost, an armour clad man and a bear – terrorised the satellite villages of the capital. By January 1838, these reports had grown so numerous that the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, convinced that pranksters where to blame, vowed that those responsible would be caught and punished. London was in the grip of a sort of mass hysteria with the thing – now christened Spring Heeled Jack because of the immense leaps it seemed capable of – being sighted all over the city, yet somehow always evading capture.  

It was at the height of this panic, on the evening of the 20th of February 1838 that an eighteen year old girl by the name of Jane Alsop was startled by a furious knocking at the door of her family home in the district of Bow. Jane answered the door to an excited gentleman who claimed to be a police officer. He breathlessly informed the young lady that he believed he had successfully apprehended non-other than Spring Heeled Jack himself and implored her to fetch a lamp. When Ms. Alsop returned however, the lamp’s light revealed the caller’s peculiar attire “he was wearing a kind of helmet, and a tight fitting white costume like an oilskin. His face was hideous; his eyes were like balls of fire. His hands had claws of some metallic substance”.

The man attacked Jane, tearing at her clothes with his talon-like hands but vanished into the night when, alerted by her screams of terror, members of her family came to her assistance. In a statement given to the Lambeth police Jane swore that the caller had “vomited blue and white flames” during the assault. 

Only five days later another eighteen year old girl, this time named Lucy Scales was walking with her sister on their way home from visiting their brother. As the women travelled along the thoroughfare known as Green Dragon Alley a figure sprang from the shadows and attacked Lucy, apparently breathing fire into her face. The assailant then strolled calmly away as Lucy’s sister tried desperately to tend to her sibling, calling out for help from anyone who might hear. Lucy was rendered insensible by the attack and fell into violent spasms which lasted several hours.  

These reports and others like them cemented Jack’s reputation as a kind of fiendish cultural icon for the new Victorian age, a position which he held up until his more vicious namesake Jack the Ripper began his reign of terror. Penny Dreadfuls, the day’s version of pulp fiction magazines, telling of the phantom’s exploits were published and plays bearing his name were staged in many of the city’s fleapit theatres. Soon however, the attacks became less frequent and slowly but surely Spring Heeled Jack faded from real life terror to urban myth. Over the next few decades periodic sightings of the entity came from as far afield as Sheffield, Northampton and Lincolnshire. On one occasion he was even shot by a soldier when he appeared at an army barracks in Aldershot, the bullets apparently having no adverse effect.  

Jack still crops up now and again; most recently in South Herefordshire during the late 1980s when a Mr. Marshall was slapped by a strange, jumping figure that bounded away across open fields cackling after the attack. Nearly two centuries since Spring Heeled Jack’s first appearance, it seems we are no closer to solving the mystery of who or what it actually is.

Autumn. The season of the witch. Lush greens transfigured to fox-fur auburn. Witch and fox are allies of old. In Welsh folklore, mischievous sorceresses became vixens to mislead the hunt. The cunning fox acts as familiar, guide, and guise for the Cunning Woman.

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September 22nd marks the 2020 Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Mabon, Harvest Home, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair, An Clabhsúr, or Alban Elfed are names given to Neo-Pagan festivals which take place at the turning of the season. All are thanksgiving festivals – giving thanks to the Gods and Goddesses for Summer’s bounty and hoping to secure their blessings for the months ahead. 

The American poet, academic, and Neo-Pagan Aidan A. Kelly is widely credited with introducing the name Mabon in the 1970s. Mabon ap Modron is a prominent figure in Welsh mythology, said to have fought alongside King Arthur. Tales of Mabon ap Modron are said to stem from an older Celtic God, or demi-God figure, Mabon – the son of the Mother Goddess – and so the modern festival is named in his honour. 

The word witch has been used in a derogatory fashion for many centuries, only to be embraced and reclaimed by magical practitioners in the last hundred years or so. Before this reclamation, the most simple definition of witch was a practitioner of malevolent Black Magic; using their knowledge and skills to (attempt to) cause hardship, misfortune, and harm to others. Yet, there have always also been those who practice White Magic; using their powers to help and to heal. Rather than “witch”, these Folk Healers have long been known as Wise Women and Men (“dynion hysbys” in the Welsh Language), or Cunning Folk, amongst other names.  

The distinction between evil, Satanic witches and the benevolent, often Godly, Cunning Folk was so clearly defined in the minds of the general populace that, even during the Witch-Trials of the 17th-century, few of these Wise Women and Men stood accused in England or Wales. Of those who did, few Cunning Folk were ever convicted of the crime of witchcraft because, even though there was little or no doubt in the minds of those who knew them that these people possessed magical knowledge and performed magical acts regularly, theirs was a wholly separate class of magic. 

The distinction between these two classes of magic and two kinds of practitioners remained clear well into 18th-century until the Witchcraft Act of 1736 was passed. Legally, after that Act came into force, magic no longer existed. Anyone claiming to have magical powers, or to offer magical services was, therefore, a fraud; Wise Woman or witch, the crimes and the penalties were the same. From this point on the line between the two magics became increasingly blurred, and the word “witch” did just as well for anyone. 

The mischief of witches is well known […] In North Glamorgan witches sometimes took the form of a fox. The animal baffled the hounds, and led huntsmen into dangerous places. Neither mask nor brush would the huntsmen have when the witch led them.  – from Folk-lore and folk-stories of Wales, by Marie Trevelyan (1909)

Both witches and Cunning Folk have their familiars – their magical guides, companions, and helpers. In the case of Cunning Folk, they might be said to be faeries (although it is worth mentioning that, in 17th-century Scotland, several witches were convicted and executed for consorting with the Fae), while the witches’ must surely be demons, but in either case, familiars appeared most often in the forms of animals. 

In Japanese folklore, the most popular magical familiar by far is the fox, or “Kitsune“. Kitsune are believed to possess inherent magical powers, and one ancient method of gaining magical knowledge – essentially of becoming a witch – was to feed, befriend, and tame one of these creatures. Kitsune can assume human form and, according to the old legends, particularly enjoy becoming young, attractive women. Many Japanese folk tales tell of men unwittingly seduced by foxy women. 

“Certain wicked women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride at night with Diana on certain beasts, with an innumerable multitude of women, passing over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and evoked by her on certain nights.” [5]  – from Malleus Maleficarum (1486), Chapter III, “How they are Transported from Place to Place”.

The Gandreið – “Witches’ Ride” – long depicted as the chaotic broomstick-flight towards the Black Sabbat – is now interpreted by many scholars of witchcraft not as a bodily flight through the air, but as a spiritual one. The practitioner often guided by an animal on their journey, or sometimes taking the form of an animal themselves. “Sent out” from the physical self via meditation, lucid dreaming, or other Shamanic means, the practitioner (who might call themselves a witch) may become a fox. … a hare, a crow, a cat, a moth… They may see through the eyes of another. Gain knowledge and understanding of the world beyond their own everyday experiences. They may learn the Kitsune’s secrets. They may baffle the hounds, and lead the huntsmen into dangerous places.

Denoon Law fort is a grass-covered hillfort in the Sidlaw Hills, in Angus, Scotland. According to James Cargill Guthrie, writing in 1875, “It was the mythical abode of the elfins and fairies, and formerly a fitting haunt for their midnight revelries.” 

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Denoon Law fort seems to have been a prehistoric construction added to over many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. The County Angus survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland (1983), described Denooon Law:

This fort crowns the summit of Denoon Law, a steep-sided volcanic plug on the NW side of Denoon Glen, a narrow valley at the N end of the Sidlaw Hills. The fort is roughly D-shaped on plan with the chord of the D formed by a long straight rampart that stands above the precipitous SE flank of the hill. It measures 105m from NE to SW by 55m transversely within a rampart that measures up to 17m in thickness and over 5m in external height but is clearly of more than one phase. 

Where the differentiation is clear, the latest phase of rampart measures about 6m in thickness and overlies the remains of a much thicker earlier rampart. Intermittently visible at the SW end of the fort is an outer face to the later rampart, comprising drystone walling that has, in places, been displaced downslope by the weight of core material behind. This outer face comprises no more than four or five courses of thin sandstone slabs and, although what is currently visible will only be the top of the surviving wall-face, a wall constructed of such material cannot have stood to any great height and what we see today is likely to be the remains of some form of comparatively low revetment. 

In both the earlier and later ramparts there is very little evidence of stone within the core and it appears that the material (boulder clay) for both has largely been derived from several large quarries within the interior of the fort. At the SW corner of the fort most of the rampart has been removed, leaving only the lower part of the outer talus. The fort, or at least its latest phase, had two entrances, one on the NE and another on the NW, both of which are crossed by the remains of a narrow, later, wall that runs around the entire circuit of the fort and may be associated with at least some of the buildings within the interior.

In his 1875 book, The Vale of Strathmore; its Scenes and Legends, James Cargill Guthrie gave the following account of Denoon Law, and the faerie legend attached to it:

The Hill of Denoon is steep, and of considerable height, one side of the rock being nearly perpendicular, while the other sides are of tolerably easy ascent. A stone wall, eight or nine feet in thickness, is carried obliquely round the Hill, encircling a space of 340 or 350 yards in circumference. Within this semi-circular and extensive rampart, there are scattered vestiges of the foundations of an immense castellated edifice, with traces of several entrances in the external walls. It is to this Castle, therefore, the following short legend refers. 

Eight hundred years have rolled away since the erection of the first Castle of Glamis; yet from the darkness, turmoil, and strife of that early time comes, weird-like, a legend’s muffled chime. 

The Hill of Denoon was at that remote period accounted sacred or haunted ground. It was the mythical abode of the elfins and fairies, and formerly a fitting haunt for their midnight revelries. 

When the silvery moonbeams lovingly slept in dreamy beauty on the green slopes of the enchanted Hill, and the blue bells and the purple heather were wet with the dew of angels’ tears, arrayed in gossamer robes of bespangled gold, with wands of dazzling sheen and lances of magical brightness, would the troops of elfins flauntingly dance to the 

music of the zephyrs, until the shrill cry of the chanticleer put an end for the time to their mystical enchantments. 

Suddenly, as in blue clouds of vapour, they noiselessly vanished away, no sound remaining to break the oppressive stillness, save that of the fountain rivulet, as it fretfully leapt from crag to crag, as if piteously regretting the mysterious departure of its ethereal visitors. 

Having forsworn the presence and companionship of the terrestrial inhabitants of earth, it was a sacred dictum in the code of the fairies that no habitation for human beings should be permitted to be built within the hallowed precincts of the enchanted ground. Unable of themselves to guard against such sacrilegious encroachment, they had recourse to the aid of, and formed a secret compact with the demons, or evil spirits, whose sole avocation consisted in doing mischief, and bringing trouble and misfortune on those under the ban of their displeasure. By this compact these evil spirits became solemnly bound to prevent any human habitation whatever from being erected on the hill, and to blast in the bud any attempts whensoever and by whomsoever made to break this implacable, unalterable decree. 

It was about this time the alarm-note was sounded, as the Queen of the Fairies, who, with an eye more observant than the rest of her compeers, observed one evening in the moonlight, certain indications of the commencement of a human habitation. Horror and dismay were instantly pictured on the fair countenances of the masquerading troops of merry 

dancers as the awful truth was ominously revealed to them by the recent workmanship of human hands. 

A council of war was immediately held, when it was determined to summon at once the guardian spirits to their aid and protection. 

” By our sacred compact,” cried the Queen, ” I command the immediate attendance of all the demons and evil spirits of the air, to avenge the insult now offered to the legions of Fairyland, and to punish the sacrilegious usurpers who dare infringe the sanctity of their mystical domains.” 

These demons instantly obeyed the haughty summons, and, in the presence of those they had sworn to protect, they in a twinkling demolished the structure, hurling the well-proportioned foundations over the steep rock into the vale beneath! 

The builder, doubtless very much surprised and chagrined when he returned to his work in the early dawn of the following morning, was sorely puzzled to account for the entire disappearance of the solid foundations of the great castle he intended to be erected on the Hill. He did not, however, waste much time, or use much philosophic argument, 

on the matter, and gave orders to prepare new foundations of even a more durable character. 

The demons, to show their invincible power, and for the sake of more effect, allowed the new foundations to rise a degree higher than the former, before they gave out their fiat of destruction. In an instant, however, they were again demolished, and the builder this time gravely assigning some fatal shock of Nature as the cause of the catastrophe 

quietly resolved to repair the damage by instantly preparing new and still more solid foundations. 

Additional and more highly skilled workmen were engaged, and everything for a time went favourably on, the walls of the castle rising grandly to view in all the solidity and beauty of the favourite architecture of the period. 

Biding their time, the demons again ruthlessly swept away as with a whirlwind every vestige of the spacious halls, razing the solid massy foundations so effectually that not one stone was left upon another! 

Things were now assuming a rather serious aspect for the poor builder, who, thinking that he had at last hit upon the true cause of these successive disasters, attributed his misfortunes to the influence of evil spirits. A man of courage and a match, as he imagined, for all the evil spirits of Pandemonium, supposing they were let loose at once against him by the Prince of Darkness, he unhesitatingly resolved to keep watch and ward on the following night, and to defy all the hosts of hell to prevent him rebuilding the projected edifice. The night expected came; but, alas, alas! 

“His courage failed when on the blast 

A demon swift came howling past, 

Loud screeching wild and fearfully, 

This ominous, dark, prophetic cry 

” Build not on this enchanted ground ! 

‘Tis sacred all these hills around ; 

Go build the castle in a bog, 

Where it will neither shake nor shog! ”